


The Devil in Ink

by Ritequette



Series: DGM Fic Requests [1]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, M/M, There is hurt but there is no comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ritequette/pseuds/Ritequette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nea's revolution fails. And he doesn't get a second chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil in Ink

**Author's Note:**

> FIC REQUEST for aymiwalker on Tumblr: past!neallen. pasta betraying neah for the bookman (and secretly regretting it)

_What is a Bookman…_  

Allen writes this in the bottom margin of the private journal he is not supposed to have. Its pages are crinkled and damp, from the storm, the downpour, where it sat in his coat pocket as he watched from the alley. Watched the end of a failed revolution, the end of a coup gone horribly wrong, the end of what may have been humanity’s last chance for survival. Watched and did nothing—recorded. 

Recorded the death of Nea D. Campbell.

The image will haunt him to his grave, a ghostly echo in his mind that Bookman will never hear, will never know of—must never know of—that begins and ends in the hole in chest where a heart would be if he were anyone else. (But he’s not anyone else, and that’s the problem.)

The image of Nea, barely a man, boyhood round in his cheeks, crumpled against the brick wall, life blood spilling out onto the cobbles. The image of Nea, who Allen had watched grow and thrive—the two of them growing side by side, for years—a sword held limply in his hands, the last remnant of his lost battle to the Earl who had ruined everything. That had ruined _Mana._ That had dispelled the illusion that was the Campbell twins—two halves of one whole, in reality, that could never survive apart forever. Without succumbing to madness.

The image of Nea—turning his head to see Allen watching from the alley. To see Allen refusing to emerge from the shadows. To see Allen, without the smiles and laughter. To see Allen, without the helping hand. To see Allen, without the promises they’d made over their years together. All of it, the whole persona, the whole person, cast off. Human flesh stripped away to reveal the Bookman Junior underneath.

The image of Nea, betrayal singing in his eyes. A song as melancholy as the Ark’s. A building rage beneath its notes that never quite emerged, that never quite sparked into flame—it collapsed, before Allen’s eyes, into grim resignation.

Allen knows the magic that could have saved Nea. 

And Nea knew that he knows.

And up until that moment in the alley, where Nea sat bleeding in the overcast light, and Allen stood watching in the darkness…up until that moment, he thought Allen would use it. Without hesitation. Without remorse. He thought Allen would take off the whole damn Bookman façade and reveal the person underneath, the true friend, the selfless savior.

He did not realize the person was the façade. And that is why he died. For relying on someone he should have known better than to trust. For relying on someone who could not trust themselves to choose _right_ over feigned indifference.

Allen moves his pen back to his official record of events—which Bookman requested shortly after his return to their safe house _. You can’t be too careful now, with the Noah falling to pieces, most of the clan dead, the Earl insane_ …so Bookman had claimed. If only to justify their final departure from the Campbell residence. The place where they had lived so many years.

Thrown in the gutter. Memories.

Thrown in the record. Memories.

What’s the difference, honestly?

Allen doesn’t know anymore. 

He signs off on the last line of his official record, and drags the pen back to his private journal. The candle beside him on the table flickers from a breeze, cold and wet, that rattles the nearby shutters and whispers in a voice already half-forgotten, already purged onto pages Allen will never read again. (Because who can bring themselves to read their own failures, engraved in ink like blood?)

_Traitor_ , Allen hears on the air.

_Traitor_ , he scribbles on the page.

He reaches across the desk and slams the official record shut, a dull thud in the quiet room. Bookman is here, somewhere, and will have heard the sound. He investigates emotion like a hawk eyes its prey, as if it’s a disease. And Allen thinks, under the flickering light, gold and fiery (like a pair of eyes he knew so well), that Bookman is both right and wrong in the worst of ways.

Emotion _is_ a disease. A plague that purges apathy and sparks fevers of human passion. Of _humanity_.

And human is what Bookmen cannot be. And human is what Bookmen _are_.

And a human that feels no emotions, that cuts the disease of feeling, _being_ , of out its own flesh, that cuts itself out of history’s pages, as if to pretend _war_ is only spoken on fevered lips…what is _that_?

_What is a Bookman…_

Allen hears the soft footsteps of sin disguised as wisdom, pure, untainted.

_What is a Bookman…_

He slams his journal shut and hides it away.

_What is a Bookman…_

For another rainy day.                                    

_What is a Bookman…_

_…but a devil in ink that records humanity’s descent into Hell?_


End file.
